CONTADOR HARRISON

IDC: Smartphones overtakes feature phones

Posted on April 26, 2013 01:22 am

Figures published earlier today by IDC shows that for the first quarter of 2013 and for the first time ever, smartphone shipments have surpassed 50% of the global mobile phone market. Global mobile phone market has grown 4% year on year. This translates as 418.6 million total devices of which 216.2 million equivalent to 51.6% were smartphones. The figures show that demand for the connected devices has grown by 41.6% compared with the same time last year when 152.7 million smartphone handsets were shipped.Samsung and Apple are still firmly the world’s number one and number two device makers. Samsung shipped 70.7 million and Apple 37.4 million handsets over the last three months. ZTE, Huawei and Lenovo are also making huge gains and that has translated to bad news for Nokia, BlackBerry and Sony who have been pushed out of the top five.

In addition to smartphones displacing feature phones, the other major notable trend in the industry is the emergence of Chinese companies among the leading smartphone vendors according to the research. Until last year, it was common to see former market leaders Nokia, BlackBerry and HTC among the top five. While those companies have been in various stages of transformation since, Chinese vendors, including Huawei and ZTE as well as Coolpad and Lenovo, have made significant strides to capture new users with their respective Android smartphones. LG moved back into third place with 10.3 million devices shipped, Huawei has moved into fourth 9.9 million handsets and ZTE is now in fifth place having shipped 9.1 million. Commanding a combined 50% global market share, I so think that it will probably take more than a new handset for any phone maker to dislodge the dynamic duo of Samsung and Apple from the top of the pile.